


Hi, I'm Grace Marie

by Nikolai_Alexi



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Bruce is a cute lil science snowflake, Clint is an adorable and precious little pancake, M/M, Natasha is protective, Oneshot, Thor is pretty cute too, Tony Stark is an Asshole, Wanda is mentioned but not really a big character, mentions of abuse, mentions of selfharm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-11 03:12:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10453659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nikolai_Alexi/pseuds/Nikolai_Alexi
Summary: They rescued her. But they don't know her. She has no name and she doesn't speak. She doesn't like to be touched and doesn't like to be close to them. It's unnerving being with her sometimes. But little by little she begins to allow them to become family. Then her biological family comes to her. "Hi, I'm Grace Marie."





	

She felt eyes. She always felt eyes now a days. They never stopped watching her. Since moving into the Tower all of them watched her, as if they were waiting to strike of her to break down. Like she was a time bomb.  


She shook her head softly and poured the steaming water of the kettle into a mug. The heated porcelain of the mug warmed her fingers and felt familiar. She pulled her tea ball out of the drawer, where Bruce kept all the other tea things, and filled it with her favourite blend. She watched as the clear water was stained a green-brown as the tea leaves contaminated its purity. Her mind was whirling.  


The steam rising from her mug laid softly over her face, making her breathe in deeper and close her eyes. It was two in the morning and she was up making tea...she didn't sleep much anymore. Time felt irrelevant.  


While mixing a small amount of honey and a tiny bit of rock sugar to her tea, she tries to figure out who's watching her. It's not JARVIS, she knows that much. When JARVIS is sent to monitor her, she knows what it feels like. It makes her anxious and frustrated that she can't get rid of him.  


Natasha feels watchful, careful. Natasha doesn't make her skin crawl, but she's still wary. Thor makes her fearful. She's jumpy and doesn't like being near him too much. It's not that he's mean or purposely intimidating, but he's boisterous and loud, tall and muscular.  


Clint...he doesn't make her skin crawl at all. She's calmer with Clint than the others. Clint is easy. He's calm, but mischievous and cunning. He's easier to let her guard down around. He's not pushy or loud. He's just Clint.  


Bruce, she is wary around, but it's not bad. She can feel Banner’s inner green demon, but Hulk doesn't scare her anymore. Hulk is actually very gentle when he's not scared or angry. It calms her slightly. Though she doesn't quite know how to interact with Banner. Both of them are shy and content to sit in silence a good arm's distance away from each other.  


Coulson isn't difficult. He's a straight forward kind of person with his threats laid clear. She tended to steer clear of Coulson in general, just to avoid any repercussions, but he makes her feel slightly easier.  


Stark...Stark. The vindictive bastard with an ego larger the the entire United States; who had yet to threaten or try to boss her around yet he made her skin prickle and every single defensive strategy she'd ever learned come slamming into the circuit of her mind. It wasn't so much as he felt dangerous, but he did to a degree, as it was that he felt unpredictable. Like he would snap at any given moment. The thought made her shiver in distress.  


She pulled her cardigan closer to her tiny body in an attempt to still the now persistent trembling.  
She wraps two thin hands around her mug and walks silently from the kitchen to the armchair near the window of the sitting room. It was her favourite place to sit nowadays and it seems that the rest of the Avengers had graciously allowed her to over take the chair. No one but her sat in it anymore...it made the sinking feeling of guilt claw its way into her gut but it also brought the blossoming feeling of hope behind her breastbone.  


Clint watches from the shadows of his perch as she curls up in her chair. Tony liked to bitch about her taking over the chair when she wasn’t around, but everyone knew he was happy that she’d found a safe spot in the penthouse where she could be around the team without feeling threatened. Clint thinks that Tony knows how much his presence unnerves her and tries to keep out of her space as much as possible. Clint’s seen the tension that explodes in her shoulders, the tightness in which she carries herself when Tony is in the room, he’s seen the distance return to her eyes. His mind begins bringing up scenes where she and Tony have interacted, when her voice breaks through. She must have been talking very loudly then. Perhaps shouting. But Tony’s bedroom is soundproof and everyone else was on their own floor.  


Clint maneuvers from his perch where he can see her and read her lips. She knocks the wind out of him by signing gently.  


_"Okay?"_ She asks.  


_"Can’t sleep."_ He signs slowly. He’s sure his surprise is clear on his face.  


_"That makes two of us. Keep me company?"_ Clint quirks a smile at her rather shaky signing. She struggles with making the manual question mark  


_"You sure?"_ Clint asks.  


_"So long as you’re not too close."_ A reasonable request. He approached the couch next to her chair slowly. He sees goosebumps emerge from her porcelain-pale skin, but her eyes don’t go distant and she doesn’t tense, so he takes it as okay to sit there. She shivers and draws tighter around herself, but does nothing else. Her eyes are closed and Clint can see she’s steadying herself. He understands. It was the same with Phil at first. So he lets her take her time. Eventually, the tension starts to wane and she begins to relax.

They grow close. She and Clint. They are almost always up. Sitting in the living room at god-only-knows hours of the morning and talk silently. Clint stops wearing his hearing aids around her. She stops wearing her cardigans and too long and too-hot-to-be-comfortable-sleep-pants. The first time he saw the extent of her scaring he cried and was not reassured when she told him that it wasn’t the worst of it. That night was the first night she touched him. He’d broken down sobbing for her. He could see the cigarette burns, criss-cross marks of her own blades, the marks of the whips she’d endured, the bullets, the surgeries. It’d taken her a minute, but she’d slowly sunk to her knees and pulled Clint into her chest. She’d spoke, out loud, for the first time since they started their nightly hang outs. She seemed to understand that the vibrations from her chest reassured the distraught archer. She’d helped him to his floor and into bed. Tucking him in and kissing him gently on the forehead before retreating.  


It was Bruce Banner who noticed anything. The shift between she and Clint. They worked together smoothly. Clint wasn’t talking and neither was she. It wasn’t a surprise that she didn’t speak, but when Clint was silent it usually meant a stealth attack from the ceiling tiles, roof rafters, or vents. Bruce watched with interest for weeks. Careful cataloging the two’s behaviours and interactions. It was months before he pinned the difference and when he did he wanted to smack himself. The realization came on one morning when the rest of the team had gone out for breakfast and a game of paintball. Bruce had found her curled up in her chair with a leather bound book in her lap. He’d asked if he could sit with her. She’d given him a Stark-like ‘as-you-please’ gesture and a tentative, small, shy smile before returning to the book in her lap. Bruce had pulled out his own book on biomechanical theory and was immersed in it for an hour and a half before the realization as to why this was so odd and different. He could have jumped up and smacked himself in the face when it happened, but he held himself still and kept looking at his book as to not startle her. Her lips quirked up slightly when he looked at her.  


He’d found them one night, not long after his realization. Clint was sitting cross legged on the floor in front of her chair and her hands ran through the curly, dirty blond, strands of Clint’s hair. They were the perfect picture of relaxation and friendship. He wished he had his camera to capture the moment and keep it frozen in time forever. When Clint’s eyes opened, he met Bruce’s gaze and smiled a small smile. Clint lifted his hands and signed to her. She met Bruce’s gaze and gave a small wave. Bruce grinned like a child before waving back and proceeding to the kitchen and making himself a cup of tea. He considered asking the two friends if they needed anything, but when he walked back into the living room to ask, the two were fast asleep. He murmured to JARVIS to take a picture and send it to his tablet. 

Over the course of the coming months, Bruce often found himself with Clint and the tiny tagalong, as he’d taken to referring to her, in the penthouse sitting room and even his lab. Clint had been surprised when Bruce had rearranged things slightly and made the archer a nest in his lab. His kaleidoscope eyes had widened in surprise and teared up. Banner had also confiscated the archer’s hearing aids and made adjustments to them. He could see why Clint hated them. When Banner had asked Clint to remove them and hand them over, he didn’t miss the chaffing around the shell of Clint’s ears. He’d taken them apart and learned how they worked. When he made his own version, he fitted them directly to Clint’s ears. The archer was much happier with his improved hearing aids and was found wearing the dark purple aids pretty much constantly. His tagalong simply watched Banner work through the process with interested eyes. When Bruce had inquired about her interest, she’d simply shrugged and jotted down a note on a post-in asking him to teach her a little. He’d launched into explaination almost instantly with excitement of being able to share knowledge. She watched him talk, listening intently with curiosity and amusement in her jade eyes.  


Sometime later, when he’d been babbling about the electromagnetic transmitters in Clint’s hearing aids for a solid five or ten minutes, he’d asked her if she was bored out of her mind yet. He was pleasantly surprised when she assured him, via post-it, that she was very intrigued and he was a great teacher. She nearly made him faint when she summarized what he’d been saying into a few words and asked him to continue. Even Clint, who was not a science driven person, became interested in Bruce’s teaching. Eventually the three were called to dinner in the penthouse, but before they left Bruce’s lab, she planted a featherlight kiss on his cheek and thanked him for his lesson.

It’s Steve and Natasha who manage to add themselves into her circle next. It was odd how they managed to do so. Apparently, Natasha is nosier than she seems. After one of their nightly hang outs, she’d forgotten her sketch book on the coffee table. Natasha had found it when she’d woken and thought it was Steve’s. At breakfast, Clint and Bruce both noticed the slightly panicked look on her face. At the end of breakfast, Steve stood up.  


“Nat found a leather bound sketch book on the coffee table this morning and gave it to me...it’s not mine though. So who’s harboring an amazing artistic talent from another artist? Cause I’m offended.” She raised her arm shyly, indicating that the book belonged to her.  


“I hope you don’t mind. I didn’t know whose it was, I looked through it. You have an amazing eye. Your work is phenomenal.” Steve was a little bashful, knowing how he would feel if someone when through his sketchbooks without his permission. But she made a dismissive gesture, though her face was bright scarlet at the praise.  


It was later in the day that Steve cautiously approached. She, Clint, and Bruce were in Bruce’s lab again working on whatever caught their fancy when Steve walked in quietly. He stood silent at the end of the work bench the three of them were bent over and waited until Bruce looked up, a little flushed and his eyes bright. He was slightly surprised to see Steve there.  


“Sorry for sneaking up...I just wanted an artist’s opinion for a moment.” Steve looked at her quizzically and she granted him a small grin before beckoning him to show her. It was a drawing of Brooklyn. The bridge in the background and an old New York town in the foreground. The buildings were old, obviously from the 40s or 50s, and the road held a carriage in front of one building along with mildly detailed passerbys. She grabs a legal pad and points out small shading errors and line curvage that is slightly out of proportion. Steve watches intently as she adds the beginnings of more shading on his grey scale. They all watch as she picks out minute details and focuses her attention on them before pointing them out to Steve. By the time she finishes, Steve looks ecstatic and it’s a welcome look on the supersoldier’s face, his eyes are basically glowing and he looks like he could kiss her. Her eyes are sparkling with pride and amusement as the normally composed soldier babbles about different techniques he could develop because of her help and do you think the shading would look better with pen on top of pencil or should he go in with charcoal for touch up?  
When he leaves, he’s floating out rather than walking. Clint is sporting a ridiculous grin and Bruce can’t help but laugh at the scarlet flush on her face. The three return to their original projects after a good laugh at Steve. Clint was modifying some arrows under Bruce’s careful instruction, Bruce himself was fiddling with more options for Clint’s hearing aids with an extra pair Clint had gifted him, and she sketched contently in her newly returned sketchbook. 

It’s two days later that Natasha inserts herself into the picture. She comes into the sitting area of the penthouse holding a dark coloured bag. She beckons the tiny tagalong to follow her but orders Clint to stay behind. She nervously looks at Clint and Bruce for a moment before taking a shuddering breath and following the Widow out of the room.  


“Relax, I simply wanted to thank you. I didn’t think you’d like the attention out there.” Natasha says gently. She can see the outline of Clint’s sprawled out body on the floor and she can see Bruce tucked into himself on the couch. Her worries dissipate somewhat. She cocks her head at the Russian in question as to why she’s being thanked.  


As if she knows her exact question Natasha smiles gently, “Steve has difficulties in the modern era. I haven’t seen him so excited since we found and brought Bucky back. He babbled like a two-year-old child last night about how good you were with details in his drawing and how he wouldn’t have even noticed things like curvature proportion. He was so excited. He drew all night and I’ve just been able to get him to go to bed a few minutes ago. I don’t know you well enough to really get you something to say thank you. But I had Clint do some snooping in your art box.” Natasha sheepishly hands over the brown coloured bag. She opens it up curiously and gasps. Her face breaks out into a face-splitting grin as she carefully pulls things out one by one. Charcoal blocks, graphite pencils of every shape and size, prismacolor pencils, Maimeri Puro oil paints, fineliner pens, touch twin markers, Copic sketch markers, Smart Colour gel pens, a set of 90 Rembrandt oil pastels, and more sketchbooks than she could imagine filling. Suddenly a feeling of suspicion grips her chest. She looks at Natasha with an accusatory stare.  


“You caught me...I was hoping that someday soon you’d draw with Steve? I don’t mean to push, but I think it would be really good for him.” She breathes a sigh of relief. She nods to Natasha before going back to admiring her new supplies.  


“I’m clueless on anything that comes to art, so I hope it’s all satisfactory.” Natasha starts to leave. But she reaches out gently and captures the retreating assassin's hand with a featherlight touch. Natasha turns around slowly, surprised at the touch. Thin, too pale, arms encircle her waist tentatively. A very big thank you from the small girl. Natasha smiles gently as the shy girl retreats quickly.  


“You’re welcome, Детский паук.” Natasha’s voice is so quiet it’s a surprise the younger girl even heard, but she did and smiles once more at Natasha. The Russian retreats to the living room to see the boys eagerly waiting.  


“Baby Spider?” Clint asks softly, his kaleidoscope eyes shining brightly. Natasha ignores his question and sighs distractedly.  


“She’s not eating enough.” She says softly, “I can feel her ribs.”  


“She let you touch her?” Bruce asks, his voice soft and impressed.  


“She sort of caught my hand as I was leaving and hugged me.” Natasha said with a small smile. Thor, who’d been silent the entire time, which was slightly worrying, spoke softly, “Does the one-without-a-name begin her healing?” Clint smiled sadly at Thor.  


“Yeah, buddy, I think she’s healing.” Thor is solemn for a moment while he thinks. Mjolnir sits by his side and they can all feel the calming presence the sentient-like metal releases. Thor smiles at the feeling, obviously very in tune to his hammer, and says: “I wish our one-without-a-name luck in her healing journey. I too remember how painful dealing with inner warriors and enemies can be.” They smile at Thor. Sometimes, Thor could be about as intuitive as a rock, but other times, he could make the entire team smile.  


It’s quite a bit later, as the sun starts to set, that she comes into the sitting area. Bruce is proud. She sits closer than normal to Bruce because Natasha is sitting on the other end of the couch, and Thor has taken her normal chair. Leaving only the middle cushion of the couch open. Clint signs to her from his place on the floor and she rolls her eyes before signing back. Bruce watches Thor and Natasha’s reactions. Natasha’s lips are quirked, she knows sign language having been taught by Clint when they were younger, she must have found the interaction amusing. Thor’s eyes are wide and excited. Bruce can see the demi-god trying not to startle their tiny tagalong by his normal boisterous, booming, exclamations.  


“Eye of the Hawk, what is it that you have just performed?” Thor asks after a moment. Clint turns to face him.  


“It’s called sign language, buddy. It’s a way that people like me, who can’t hear, communicate.” Thor looks very confused.  


“How, then, do you hear now?” Natasha smiles.  


“Hearing Aids. I can hear very little without them, but it has to be very, very, very loud for me to even register it. These little devices,” Clint tilts his head for Thor to see the dark purple devices nesting gently on the back of Clint’s ears, “Amplify any sounds around me that they pick up and makes them a volume I can hear at. But when I’m not wearing them, I can only talk with people who know sign language, unless there’s a pen and paper somewhere that someone can write down what they’re saying on.”  


“Who knows this hand language you speak with?” Thor asks, those in the room can tell Thor is very interested. Maybe even a little upset because he feels as though he’s made Clint’s life harder.  


“Well, Nat and I know it. So does Bruce and Tiny over there. Steve knows a little bit, not fluent or anything, but enough of the basics. Tony doesn’t care.” Clint shrugs. Thor looks angry at the fact that Tony doesn’t care.  


“Why would the Man of Iron dismiss this language of importance so easily?” Thor asks. No one answers. Except a flourish of paper is passed to the demigod. The neat scrawl serves to make Thor even angrier in his friend’s defence.  


“The Man of Iron will not benefit from his selfishness. In my realm, when my brother Loki was adopted by my family and made kin of Odin, my mother, father and I all learned his native tongue to make him feel welcome in our dwelling. Eventually, he could speak our tongue just as well as his own, but it made him at ease in our family to be able to teach us his tongue,” Thor explained. Clint’s grin just got bigger.  


“Eye of the Hawk, would you teach me the language of your hands?” Thor asks. The room watches at Clint glows in happiness.  


“Of course, buddy! Hold on, I’ll grab some books you can take back to Asgard with you. I can probably teach you some of the basics now.” Clint scrambles out of the room in excitement. From the middle of the couch, she looks at Natasha’s face and sees happy amusement in those mysterious orbs.  


“Thank you, Thor. That means so much to him.” Natasha says gently. Thor beams in her direction.  


“I am glad to do anything that will put my friends and family at peace. My people love to hear the tales I bring back to my home about the world here on Earth. I will most definitely bring this silent language to them once I have mastered it.” There’s no more discussion as Clint comes barreling back into the room with two paperback books with him. The three onlookers watch as Clint begins to teach Thor some of the basics. He teaches the eager demigod the entire fingerspelling alphabet and shows him how to construct people’s names and short words.  


The first time Thor gets hung up with the alphabet is when he tries to do names himself.  


“But you are not spelling the name of the desired person?” Thor’s eyebrows are knotted together in confusion.  


“No. See, the way I do it is I take a letter from their name and something that is symbolic of them. For example, for Natasha. The sign I use for her name is the letter ‘N’ shooting from each wrist like widow bites. Natasha is the Black Widow, so the widow bites are symbolic of her. But for you, I use the letter ‘T’ and the sign for hammer, because Mjolnir is something symbolic of you. Do you understand?” Clint is a patient teacher, she notices. He is thorough, but interactive. It keeps them all enthralled for many hours. Thor is a quick learner and can soon sign many of the first 100 signs, the alphabet, and has given them all their own signs. The demigod seems reluctant to leave, clearly enjoying his time learning something new. He promises to continue practicing and is hopeful to be much better by the next time he comes to Earth. No one doubts him. They all bid him goodbye and safe travels back to Asgard.  


Clint has a happy little flush on his face as he and Natasha make homemade golubtsy together. Bruce inquires about the dish as the two friends prepare it. Natasha is always happy to inform someone of her homeland and tradition, regardless of the training and the hell she went through, she kept her heritage alive in the few good memories she had left. Steve emerges from his room with sleepy eyes and charcoal smudges all over his face and hands. A silent giggle escapes her as Natasha scolds him in Russian for his messy appearance. She beckons Steve over to her and dampens a napkin. Steve has to bend down for her to reach his face and wipe the charcoal, that he undoubtedly would have made worse if left to his own devices, off his face. When she finishes with his face she gets the paint and charcoal stains off his biceps and the backs of his elbows before motioning him to wash his hands. 

It’s a week before Thor comes back. He arrives a little bloodied up, which immediately set the two women into gear. They know he’ll heal in just a minute, but they fuss over him anyway. Natasha did the actual cleaning of the wounds on Thor’s arms and face. But he thanked the both of them for their attending and care once they finished their fussing. They fall into easy conversation. Thor sitting on the arm of the couch as Clint stretches over Bruce and Natasha on the couch.  


“So how is the sign language coming, Thor?” Bruce asks. Thor’s eyes light up.  


“Very well, Bruce of Hulk! I have been working very hard over the books Eye of the Hawk has given me. My people are fascinated by it as well! They eagerly await my return with more to teach them.” Clint gets that happy little flush on his cheeks again and happily begins to review with Thor.  


He makes small corrections to signs that Thor was not as sure of such as ‘brother’, ‘divorced’, ‘family’, and ‘year’. Nat even pitched in a few memory clues that would help if he was struggling with a sign.  


Clint and Thor are sitting on the floor pouring over some more of Clint’s books and working on new signs when Phil Coulson walks in with a battered and exhausted Sam Wilson with him. Nat and Bruce jump up immediately and guide Sam to the couch where they lay him down.  


Natasha fetches the first aid kit and instructs Bruce to get a damp cloth for his fever. Nat motions for help. The two women work seamlessly together, helping stitch Sam back together. He have a few bones that need to be set and he’ll have to go to medical for that at S.H.I.E.L.D, but Natasha gives him a painkiller that all but knocks him out.  


“We’ll put him in the spare bedroom up here once the pain medicine kicks in so he isn’t jostled too much.” Nat decides. The room settles once more and Coulson looks at the smallest member of the room with a curious gaze.  


“Rare sight seeing you out and about?” Coulson’s words were questioning while stating a fact, but all she does is tip her head in a conceding gesture. Coulson settles himself down on the coffee table in the middle of the two groups. Amusement and something akin to sweet fondness flickers over his face as he watches Clint teach Thor. Clint is sprawled out on his belly and is talking with animated gestures when he’s not signing. She smirks knowingly at Phil and when the secret agent looks over and sees her smirk, he glares daggers at her as if to dare her to say anything. If anything it makes her smirk even more wicked and devious. Coulson rolls his eyes at her before turning his gaze back onto Clint.  


She would have never guessed Coulson had a thing for Clint, but as she watched the two, she could see them together. They contrasted each other just enough to be a good pair. Phil with his seriousness and morbid look on the world and Clint with his equally morbid outlook at the world, but his childlike glee. They’d be cute. 

It’s another month before Sam begins to intrude on her space. None too subtly. She’s in the sparring room drawing Wanda as the witch practices. She feels more than hears Sam approach her. She’s surprised that her skin doesn’t crawl with his proximity, but she supposes that it has to deal with the fact that she’s been the one touching him for upwards of a month, tending to his wounds and what not.  


“She’s interesting to watch, isn’t she?” Sam murmurs. She nods, but doesn’t look up from her paper. The sizzling balls of red energy begin to form on her paper as Wanda demolished the objects around her. Sam watches her work with interest. He watches her hand dart around her paper adjusting this, earsing that, tweaking another thing. She never stayed in one place of her drawing like Steve did. She just glided around after the drawing took form. Sam supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when she pulled a red coloured pencil out of the knife holster on her left arm. He snorted out a small laugh and watched as she smoothed the brilliant red of Wanda’s energy into her paper.  


At dinner that night, Sam makes it known how much of a dork she is and that she carries coloured pencils in her knife holster, _"can you believe it, Coulson? Who carries coloured pencils in a knife holster?"_ It’s all in jest and quite amusing. Steve blushes furiously at the jokes being thrown his way like; _"You sure you never had a child, Rogers? She’s a spitting image of you."_ and _"Personality too. Come on, Rogers, spill the truth!"_ It’s a good dinner. Natasha and Sam made a wonderful pasta and steamed veggies with a spicy sauce and they all are laughing and joking together. Even Stark. Who she’d never would have dreamed of being in the same room with is being tolerable. He’s sitting on the other side of the table where she can see him and she has Bruce to her right and Clint to her left. She’s still uneasy, but not terrified as she once had been. Curse these damned dorks for invading her wall of insecure security.  


Coulson is making heart-eyes at Clint the entire dinner and Clint is completely oblivious. So she kicks him in the leg gently and manages to get him to see the soft expression of adoration on Phil Coulson’s face before she goes crazy with the two of them constantly dancing around each other. She’d known Clint had liked the stone cold agent for a while and was sick and tired of the two of them being lovesick teenage schoolgirls. 

It’s a month before anyone starts pushing her to Tony, and it’s the person she least expects. It’s Bruce. He has to go on a mission with Coulson, Nat, and Sam. Leaving just her, Clint, and Tony in the tower. Bruce insists that Tony isn’t that much of an egotistical bastard if he’s in his lab. Bruce also assures her that if she wants to play around with electromagnetic energies and theories than Tony’s lab is the place to do it. With all of his robots and AI system, his lab is more equipped for her type of experiments. Bruce is a biochem type of guy. He knows how to get around with currents and magnetism but it’s not what he’s good at.  


In the end, she drags Clint with her to Stark’s lab and asks permission to use his equipment. Stark looks at her in vindictive amusement before he realizes that she’s serious. He allows her access to his lab, but watches closely as she begins to test different variables on an electromag field. It’s sometime around three of four in the morning when Tony starts to speak to her. He makes some helpful suggestions about tweaking the variables just slightly to enhance the positive and negative electrons in the field. It’s seven a.m. before they really start working together and by the time Clint comes in after sleeping, while the mad scientists _"do crazy shit that’s far above my pay grade"_

It’s another two months before _it_ happens. She’s not even sure how the hell it happens, but one minute she’s eating a large plate of Natasha’s homemade French Toast with strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, maple syrup, and powdered sugar and the next Sam Wilson is next to her saying; “Listen, I get that you don’t want us to know your real name and that’s totally cool and all, but we’re giving you names from us now. So get used to it.”  


In the next week, she’s let all the Avengers give her names. 

Sam calls her Lilly, after the artist Lilly Martin Spencer. 

Tony calls her Sophia, because it makes her seem classy and sophisticated. 

Nat sticks to her nickname of Детский паук, but calls her Кристина when the boys force her to pick and actual name. 

Clint calls her Aurora, after the Disney Princess from Sleeping Beauty. 

Steve calls her Rosie, and he’s teased mercilessly for it. 

Thor calls her Nyx, which surprises her until he explains: her past had been a bad one. One Hades had too much fun with and left the broken pieces of her with the Hellhounds of the Underworld to chew on like bones. But like Nyx, she was becoming the goddess of her own darkness and demons. She thinks that she likes this one the best. 

Bruce calls her Lilo, from Lilo and Stitch, he says that like Lilo they found her lost and broken, but she found them and they’re beginning to stitch her back together. 

Wanda calls her Liška, she doesn't offer an explanation for it, but they think it has something to do with the name "Myska" that they used to hear Pietro call her. 

It takes her less than a week to get used to all the names she now has. She feels as though there’s a permanent smile on her face. Every time someone call her by their name for her, she feels that blossoming little feeling behind her breastbone. Before she knows it, she’s hugging Thor goodbye and hip checking Tony in the early lab hours. She’s sparring with Natasha and french braiding Wanda’s hair. She’s setting up pranks with Sam and Clint. And sitting on the ground in front of Bruce with a mug of tea and a book while he runs his hands through her hair and scratches lightly at her scalp. Life is brilliant. Even with the constant chaos of missions and battle wounds, so long as everybody comes home safe. And when Steve brings him home, her world changes once more.  


He walked through the door and both of them froze. They had tears running down their cheeks and then he says one word, “изящество.” She grins from ear to ear, even with tears cascading their way down her cheeks and she turns to her friends - no...they’re family now. And she speaks for the first time since she was brought here two years ago.  


“Hi. I’m Grace Marie Barnes. James’ little sister.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this little blurb of an idea! Please excuse anything that may not make sense of characters that are slightly OOC, I wrote this at like 3 a.m. Let me know what you think! I may turn this into an actual chapter fic, but I'm not sure. Any feedback is welcome! I'm new to formatting on AO3 so I apologise if something is really wonky or out of format.  
> **Italicized dialogue is sign language  
> **Детский паук - Baby Spider  
> **Кристина - Kristina/Christina  
> **Liška - Fox  
> **Myska - Mouse  
> **изящество - Grace  
> Come bug me on Tumblr! [@Nikolai_Alexi](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/nikolai-alexi)


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